Saint Irenaeus on the Giving of the Holy Spirit

What follows is a reading especially suited for the Feast of Pentecost from the celebrated church father (recognized spiritual guide from the early period of Christianity) St. Irenaeus. This passage points out a number of important truths.

When the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus at his baptism, it marked the first stage of the Spirit’s coming to be with humanity in an interior, personal manner. It is a solemn reminder that the same Spirit that rested on Christ has been shared with us in baptism.

Irenaeus then reminds us that the gift of the Spirit re-unites humans divided by sin (indirectly recalling the Tower of Babel from Genesis). All true Christian teaching and practice will draw people together to God through living holy lives, not divide us from God and each other in selfishness and sinfulness.

Finally, this great Father of the faith alludes to Christ’s parable of the talents by reminding us that the “coin of the kingdom” we have been given in the Spirit is to be used and increased—not hidden away and ignored.

Our faith is never a knickknack or sentimental memorabilia: it is the active presence of God in us, drawing all things into perfect communion with the Holy Trinity—in whose image all humanity was made.

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W

hen the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.


He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them new life in Christ.

Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.


This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of broad, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.


The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.


If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, bishop (died c. 202, commemorated June 28)

“God has gone up with a shout” -- The Feast of the Ascension

Do you remember ever being left by someone you love? It is a painful experience, hard to get over. It would be easy to read the story of Jesus' Ascension to heaven and think this is how the disciples felt--but that would be wrong.

The Gospel according to Luke says that the disciples returned to Jerusalem not in sorrow but "with great joy" after the Ascension. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the character of Jesus' presence and what it means to follow him as Lord.

Many earthly leaders work to make their followers deeply dependent. This ensures the leader will remain important through the years. Christ doesn't lead this way. He does not foster a dependence based on manipulation. Rather, Christ Jesus sets people free to become fully alive, fully human as agents of Divine Love.

The Ascension, far from being a tragedy for the Apostles, proved to be a fulfillment of Jesus' own prophesy and the very means by which they could live and bring the news of the Resurrection "to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem."

The excitement in the Ascension is linked directly to the knowledge that the Lord Jesus, no longer physically limited to any one place or time, could now truly be "Lord of All." For that reason, today is one of the Principal Feasts of the Church Year and the cause of such great rejoicing in our common life. 

Not Mother's Day Sunday, Deo gratias

Is this the way to honor God or mothers?

Each year on Mother’s Day (and, to a much lesser extent, on Father’s Day), a wave of anxiety grips the Church. On the one hand, we are told that this is the third most well-attended day in the year, just behind Christmas and Easter. On the other, we hear from many that it is a painful annual trial, wherein sentimentality or biological capacity is unduly exalted in worship at the expense of spiritual substance and pastoral wisdom.

I tend to agree with the latter point of view.

Mother’s Day is a great celebration for many. Yet, it is also a massive can of worms. Seasoned clergy have often told me that they greet its approach with trepidation. Many parishes have longstanding customs for this day, and each new cleric is held to those customs with a rigid sense of vigilance. The priest may get away with heresy and administrative incompetence, but Mother’s Day will be observed with all the secular pomp possible. Sentiment, rather than the Gospel, often seems to hold the tiller in parochial life.

Other clergy will secretly admit that this day ends up being the cause of all sorts of pastoral follow-up. So many women (and men) had disastrous relations with their mothers, or lost their mothers. Other women wanted to be mothers but could not, or never wanted to be mothers and don’t like to even hear about motherhood. Some lost children; others have served effectively as mothers, but do not have the official title in law. There are myriad variations. Awkwardness, painful memories, hurt feelings, political agendas, and plain old sorrow abound.

Of course, there are many who find Mother’s Day a time of sweet and joyful gathering—a meal, a family clustering around, gifts of the home-made and the store-bought varieties being offered, memories being made even as others are recalled. It can be a delight.

But why make it such a focus in worship?

I can understand why some traditions do this, to a degree. Bereft of a Liturgical Calendar, each Sunday has to have a “meaning” connected to something—a sermon series, perhaps. Quite often, though, the source is the secular calendar…with all of its assumptions and obsessions, acknowledged or not. Using the Civil Calendar this way shows that there is more than one way for a Church community to become “culturally conditioned.”

The ancient and undivided Church, as well as The Book of Common Prayer nowhere sets apart a Sunday to commemorate Mothers or Fathers as a class of person or a vocation. This is not because we do not honor these ways of life. Indeed, we do. But we do so in the context of a basic Christian vocation that transcends them. We speak of motherhood most in connection with the Theotokos; indeed, the feasts of Our Lady are, for us, the celebration par excellence of motherhood in connection with faith.

We also focus on Jerusalem, the Church, and any number of holy women as mothers in a wide variety of ways. Some of the saints (Dame Julian and St. Gregory Nyssa come to mind) remind us that God can be spoken of in ways that include attributes of motherhood, as well. Then, of course, there is mid-Lent Sunday, one of whose many names is “Mothering Sunday.” Perhaps this might be the best time to bring the subject up in our tradition?

In our parish, the appointed collect and lessons take precedence throughout the year (this is why we still celebrate all of the Principal Feasts in an era when most parishes have dropped anything even slightly "inconvenient"). Mother’s Day is mentioned…usually in the bulletin and as a Mass intention just before we begin the Eucharistic Prayer. Once in a while it will find its way into the sermon, but only as a side-point. 

It has been the wisdom of Holy Church to name no Sunday “Mother’s Day Sunday.” Clergy should think long and hard about surrendering the Liturgy to the vagaries of American culture, wherever it obtrudes. Doing so in one place invites incursions elsewhere. How many would be comfortable with a "Singles Sunday," a "Widows/Widowers Sunday," or a "Celibate Sunday," though these are all perfectly honorable and Scripturally-endorsed states of life? This is not an idle question. It must be justified if it is going to be put front-and-center before the People of God in the Eucharist.

Let us honor mothers, but let us honor the Liturgical Year first. In so doing, we will honor not only mothers, but all vocations in their proper proportion and with due reverence.

A Very Personal Rogationtide

A Rogation Cross on Rural Farmland

The Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day form a short “season-within-a-season” in Easter: Rogationtide. These days originated many centuries ago as part of the agricultural cycle in the liturgical year—feasts and fasts connected to seed-time, growing-season, and harvest.

Unlike our modern American era, where children think food is just another industrial product (which, sadly, it often is), our forebears knew that food is both a vital and a risky thing. Among the dangers were drought, plagues, pestilence, fire, hail, flood...the list was endless. The Rogation days meant going into the fields themselves and praying for the upcoming months of growth and harvest. It meant being very clear about our dependence on God for our most basic needs.

Today, people can think of their food as simply “there,” a kind of public utility with no inherent connection to the earth. But then there are things which change that.

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to spend a semester abroad in England. In addition to learning much and deepening my faith in God, I met my wife-to-be. It was a blessed time.

And yet…

Some years later we heard about the horrors of “Mad Cow disease,” and then of a human form of that illness…variant Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease. It was all very horrifying. We learned that this ghastly, debilitating breakdown of the brain was the result of feeding cows (herbivores) foods derived from the carcasses of cattle and other livestock. A basic rule in nature (herbivores should not be fed meat—especially the brains of other herbivores) had been violated with incalculable consequences for many.

At this point, you might be saying something like “that’s horrible to hear about, but why are you so upset about it still?” The answer would be that I was in England during the period when the infected meat products were being sold and consumed. For all I know, I was exposed. Because of this, I cannot give blood any longer (even though I have a somewhat rare type), and I cannot be sure if I will develop this frightening disease myself (there is no test, and the incubation time is unknown). I live with a fear in the back of my mind about this…all because of the greed and folly of a culture so disconnected from nature that it could ignore its revealed wisdom.

To cap it all off, the most recent lectionary of the Episcopal Church has determinedly removed almost every possible reference to the venerable tradition of Rogationtide just as the need for it in our liturgical life has become so clear.

So, while Earth Day is promoted by some in the Church and others are bent on adding a politically preachy “Creation Season” to the calendar, the very practical and down-to-earth (literally) customs of Holy Church are forgotten.

At St. Timothy’s, though, it is the parish custom to keep Rogationtide. We value the connection between earth and altar, between human ethics and the “other book of scripture” God left us—the Creation. If we were looking at our industry, science, and economy through this lens in the first place, perhaps my haunting about Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease—and so many other maladies caused by human actions—would not exist.

Keeping Rogation Sunday at St. Timothy’s means, in practical terms, this: After the main liturgy, we will have a formal procession out the doors to “beat the bounds” of the parish grounds. This entails singing the Great Litany (with Rogation petitions added), going to markers at the corners of the property, offering prayers for various concerns common to our neighborhood and community life (with children in the parish “beating” the markers with pool noodles while we use verse 1 of Ps. 68 and ask God’s protection!), planting a tree or bush, blessing the Community Garden on the parish’s property, and finally blessing and distributing rogation crosses made by a parishioner. These crosses are then taken by parishioners to their own gardens and farmlands to be visible signs of the holiness of Creation and our constant intercession for a just, good and safe harvest.

None of this is done because it is “quaint.” It is entirely the result of one thing: a call to know Christ in every aspect of our life, receiving in gratitude and offering in joy to our God. Perhaps the Church will see fit to review its estimable tradition and renew its commitment to Rogationtide as an act of justice, spiritual integrity, and moral leadership. If we do not, there will be an increasing number of us who will feel the results of turning a blind eye to the misuse of the Creation over which we were set as stewards.

Some Rogation Prayers:

I. For fruitful seasons

Almighty God, Lord of heaven and earth: We humbly pray that your gracious providence may give and preserve to our use the harvests of the land and of the seas, and may prosper all who labor to gather them, that we, who are constantly receiving good things from your hand, may always give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

II. For commerce and industry

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ in his earthly life shared our toil and hallowed our labor: Be present with your people where they work; make those who carry on the industries and commerce of this land responsive to your will; and give to us all a pride in what we do, and a just return for our labor; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

III. For stewardship of creation

O merciful Creator, your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us always thankful for your loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

IV. For all who farm the earth

Eternal God, creator and sustainer of life, we praise you for the beauty and fertility of the earth. We praise you also for its complexity and mystery, before which we bow in wonder and awe. Bless all farmers everywhere upon whom we depend for the production and provision of our food, bless the management of the countryside and the husbanding of its resources.  Amen.

For more on this subject (from a Church of England source), you may want to go here.

On the Feast of Sts. Philip and James: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic

Below is a portion of a work by Tertullian (c. 160 – d. 259). As one reads it, the centrality of direct continuity between contemporary Christians and their Apostolic roots is made clear.

From time to time in the Church, there are forces and movements that reject the significance of such continuity. Such movements tend to use millenarian language, suggesting that a particular era is uniquely able to see things truly or correctly. If followed, this impulse leads spiritually to eccentricity and (eventually) a dead end. We may try to ignore this, but such efforts always lead to the same dismal results.

The “four marks of the Church” are found in the Nicene Creed: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. As we begin the commemoration of Saints Philip and James, it is a good time to remember that, whatever the issue, these marks are unalterable signs of the fullness of faith…not quaint relics or outgrown identities. 


The same faith that motivated Tertullian to write with such conviction is what will inspire Christians to live and witness to the Gospel in our own day. Disconnection from Apostolic continuity always results in division and obsessions. Only the Apostolic Faith, and not what some have wanted to add or remove from it, will communicate the Gospel in its simplicity and fullness. Thankfully, Classic Anglicanism has always sought to do and be just that.

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Our Lord Jesus Christ himself declared what he was, what he had been, how he was carrying out his Father’s will, what obligations he demanded of men. This he did during his earthly life, either publicly to the crowds or private to his disciples. Twelve of these he picked out to be his special companions, appointed to teach the nations.

One of them fell from his place. The remaining eleven were commanded by Christ, as he was leaving the earth to return to the Father after his resurrection, to go and teach the nations and to baptize them into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The apostles cast lots and added Matthias to their number, in place of Judas, as the twelfth apostle. The authority for this action is to be found in a prophetic psalm of David. After receiving the power of the Holy Spirit which had been promised to them, so that they could work miracles and proclaim the truth, they first bore witness to their faith in Jesus Christ and established churches throughout Judea. They then went out into the whole world and proclaimed tothe nations the same doctrinal faith.

They set up churches in every city. Other churches received from them a living transplant of faith and the seed of doctrine, and through this daily process of transplanting they became churches. They therefore qualify as apostolic churches by being the offspring of churches that are apostolic.

Every family has to be traced back to its origins. That is why we can say that all these great churches constitute that one original Church of the apostles; for it is from them that they all come. They are all primitive, all apostolic, because they are all one. They bear witness to this unity by the peace in which they all live, the brotherhood which is their name, the fellowship to which they are pledged. The principle on which these associations are based is common tradition by which they share the same sacramental bond.

The only way in which we can prove what the apostles taught – that is to say, what Christ revealed to them – is through those same churches. They were founded by the apostles themselves, who first preached to them by what is called the living voice and later by means of letters.

The Lord had said clearly in former times: I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot endure them now. But he went on to say: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into the whole truth. Thus Christ shows us that the apostles had full knowledge of the truth, for he had promised that they would receive the whole truth through the Spirit of truth. His promise was certainly fulfilled, since the Acts of the Apostles prove that the Holy Spirit came down on them.

From On the Prescription of Heretics

The Collect for the Commemoration of Saint Philip and Saint James, Apostles

Almighty God, who gave to your apostles Philip and James grace and strength to bear witness to the truth: Grant that we, being mindful of their victory of faith, may glorify in life and death the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Dismissed by the Good Shepherd

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Alleluia, alleluia!

Thanks be to God. Alleluia, alleluia!

During the Great 50 Days of Eastertide (and on other major feasts), it is our custom to sing the Dismissal at St. Timothy’s 10 AM Eucharist. It is beautiful. It is in keeping with the sung liturgy’s character. It underscores the festive character of this season. But, it is more than any of these reasons: it emphasizes the meaning of the Dismissal itself…much as having the Gospel chanted on major feasts forces us to “hear” it differently.

The last words of the Eucharist are those of the Dismissal. They conclude the liturgy with a resolve: to go into the world as people with a purpose. We don’t skulk off, back to our “normal” lives after Sunday worship. We are sent into our lives from the point of total reality that is the Eucharist. We go out renewed in strength and our mission as ambassadors of, heralds for, participants in the Gospel. Singing the Dismissal, with its joyful dialogue, draws this out in a more explicit, dramatic “tonality.”

The restoration of the Dismissal to the Anglican form of the Eucharist was one of the supreme gifts of the 1979 revision of The Book of Common Prayer. Having the Dismissal formally end the liturgy gave it much greater clarity of form. But, it did much, much more than that. It returned to the Eucharist an essential element of mission. After being blessed, we are pointed out the doors as people full of a gift meant not only for ourselves, but to be shared.

This Sunday is informally referred to as “Good Shepherd Sunday,” due to the collect and the appointed Gospel lesson. This Sunday functions both to reflect on the meaning of Christ’s words about himself as the true, real, model, ideal, or good shepherd, and as a subtle re-orientation of the meaning of the Resurrection from being a hidden, inner event to something with global implications. In John 10, Christ speaks of “other sheep” that need to be brought back into the One Flock. The Cross and Resurrection are the necessary pre-conditions for this reunion of all the flock. This Sunday, then, begins to point our minds towards Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit that will unlock the Resurrection’s meaning for the Church so that those "other sheep" can come home. It is that pasture you and I are privileged to call home as part of Christ's Body, but that privilege assumes our desire to invite others to share in this life.

As we end the Eucharist this Sunday, we very much need to emphasize that the Good Shepherd—who is the true host of this meal—has fed us with his gift of New Life and now sends us out into the new week as intentional sharers of that gift. In so doing, we “love and serve the Lord” in exactly the way the Good Shepherd desires.

Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Easter 

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

The Pascha nostrum: Singing with St. Paul of Christ's Rising

Christ our Passover Pascha nostrum

1 Corinthians 5:7‑8; Romans 6:9‑11; 1 Corinthians 15:20‑22
Alleluia.
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; *
  therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, *
  but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia.

Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; *
  death no longer has dominion over him.
The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; *
  but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So also consider yourselves dead to sin, *
  and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Alleluia.

Christ has been raised from the dead, *
  the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since by a man came death, *
  by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, *
  so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Alleluia.

During Easter at Morning Prayer, the BCP recommends substituting the Pascha nostrum for the usual Invitatory Psalm (either Psalm 95 or 100). At St. Timothy’s, we take this a step further and sing a lively Anglican chant setting of this text at the Eucharist from 3 Easter on. It is one of the seasonal joys of the liturgy as offered here, punctuated as it is with its glad 'Alleluias.'

The Pascha nostrum is technically called a cento, a literary work made by sewing together a collection of quotations—a series of verses from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and his Letter to the Romans. It has been a part of the Anglican liturgy for Easter since the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

By using it at Morning Prayer, we are emphasizing the unity of the 50 days of Easter—the longest (and oldest) true season of the Liturgical Year. As we progress through the events of Easter Day, through Thomas Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday, Rogationtide, Ascension, and right into Pentecost, we are not hopping from one “topic” to another, but are entering into a loving and thoughtful contemplation of the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection in its many lights and meanings.

Some people, when using the Pascha nostrum at Morning Prayer, will say it for Easter Week, others for the whole 50 days. Some use it on Sundays only, or just until Ascension Day, moving back to the Venite (Psalm 95) with its appropriate antiphon and marking the transition of character in late Eastertide. There is no “one way” to use it, though the rubrics do give us some direction. The point to be remembered is that the Pascha nostrum underscores the power of Christ’s rising as a complete break with the old life…something that each Christian must not only celebrate at Eastertide, but learn to live in the daily life of discipleship.

Praying these words will, at times, cast the light of the Resurrection on those corners of our life we are still trying to live the old way, with “the leaven of malice and evil.” For that knowledge we need to give thanks: it is the active work of the Spirit in our life as Christians this Eastertide and always.